Zeal For Truth

(This is the fourth and final part of a series on tradition. Part One, Part Two, Part Three.)

Tradition is best defined as the cyclical interaction between orthodoxy and scriptures. It can be seen most in the way that scriptures have been transformed through the course of time in their interaction with orthodoxy. Brevard Childs has provided an excellent resource for this: his book The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture. This one work is a wonderful collection of texts from as early as the second century with the most influential church fathers to as late as ten years ago; it is one of the best collections covering the way that the book of Isaiah has been reinterpreted throughout Christianity. As the book revolves around the interpretation of Isaiah from the second century to the twenty-first century, it is worth a brief look to show the interaction between orthodoxy and scriptures.

Isaiah as an Example
Childs begins with Justin Martyr’s take on Isaiah. Justin reads in Isaiah the prophecies of the virgin birth and the suffering servant, particularly seeing the death of Christ as being symbolic of the Passover lamb. Yet Justin also has his own radical interpretations, such as applying the attacks in Isaiah 3 and 5 on the eighth-century Jewish leadership to the Jews of his own day [Brevard Childs, Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004): 41].

The first two interpretations carry to this day, but the third was eventually excluded in later (much later) generations. It is already here that there is an influence of scripture on orthodoxy, which gets re-interpreted as the basis for later interpretations.

Soon after Justin, Irenaeus added a few interpretations of his own. His chief addition was in interpreting Isaiah 7 and 9 as indicating the divine and human nature of Jesus [Childs, 51]. Irenaeus is also one of the first church fathers to quote at length Christian writings and treat these as canonical literature. By the end of the third century, orthodoxy had equalized about the nature of Christ and began to flesh out its view of the incarnation of Christ. Eusebius in the third century is fixated by this idea and dedicates four chapters of his Demonstratio Evangelica to it [Childs, 83]. Furthermore, Eusebius authored the earliest extant commentary on Isaiah—evidence that Isaiah had successfully crossed over from Jewish to Christian scripture [Origen authored the first, but it is lost].

The interaction has thus far developed in this way after the death and resurrection: the early Christian community sought to read the Jewish scriptures through the lens of the death and resurrection, which lead them to the passages in Isaiah (as well as others) that could be re-read as foretelling Jesus. By appealing to these Jewish scriptures for Christian theology, they had created the first connection between scriptures and orthodoxy: one had to believe in the death of Christ as a symbol of the Passover lamb. By making this first connection, Christianity treated Isaiah now as Christian scriptures; the first cycle. Within just 100 years, this cycle was completed again as orthodoxy included the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, and the human incarnation of God. By 400 CE, Isaiah was so integral to orthodoxy that it had gained acceptance throughout Christianity. This was the case with most of the books accepted into the canon at the second Council of Carthage.

Changes and Alterations
There are also cases where orthodoxy has changed scriptures, either by removing texts from the canon or modifying the actual texts. One such instance is the story of Bel and the Dragon from the Septuagint . Not only was this text attested by fathers of orthodoxy (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen) [Lee McDonald, The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995): 103], but it was also accepted at the Council of Carthage. It was removed during the Reformation first by protestants in their struggle to return to the Jewish scriptures, even though it appears in the original 1611 Authorized Version as well as being listed in the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England.

There is also a second form of orthodoxy interacting with scripture: deliberate alterations. In the Gospel of Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism, there is a point where God speaks from the heavens saying “You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” [Luke 3:23, NRSV]. Yet many early variants record God saying “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” Bart Ehrman believes that this variant is the earlier, more original text which was changed in order to prevent an adoptionist reading of the passage [Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus (New York: HarperOne, 2005): 159-160]. It is highly likely that this is the case, but it brings up the question on how orthodoxy and scripture should interact.

Theologians today seem to suggest that it should be a simple relationship indicated by fidelity to the original texts (or what we can gather as such) coupled with studious translation and interpretation to that. On the other hand, history has consistently suggested that orthodoxy and scripture should define and change the other, even at the cost of losing the most original documents. It may be better to see scriptures “not primarily as a chronicle but as a testimony of faith in the One who identified himself to Moses from the burning bush” [Jaroslav Pelikan, Whose Bible is it? (New York: Penguin, 2005): 31].

Tradition is arguably the most important aspect for the longevity of a religion. While it is normally seen as the handing down of beliefs from one generation to the next, it should also be seen as that which is handed down, particularly the interaction between orthodoxy and scriptures. This interaction is a never-ending cycle of alteration and redefining, sometimes subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle). The relation most often seen is scriptures defining orthodoxy. Yet the reciprocal also happens, perhaps more often than some admit; orthodoxy changes scriptures through either interpretation or in modifying the set of accepted scriptures. These two functions play on each repetition of each other throughout multiple generations. Whereas some people see this as problematic, it should be embraced as an integral part of the nature of religious movements as they are concerned ultimately with the nonphysical, be it God, nirvana, rebirth, or the end of ages. Faith is not a matter of fidelity to a group of texts but rather that which inspired those texts.